Kip Jones

KIP JONES, an American by birth, has been studying and working in the UK for more than 19 years. Under the umbrella term of 'arts-based research', his main efforts have involved developing tools from the arts and humanities for use by social scientists in research and its impact on a wider public or a Perfomative Social Science.

Jones is Reader in Performative Social Science and Director of the Centre for Qualitative Researchat Bournemouth University. Kip has produced films and written many articles for academic journals and authored chapters for books on topics such as masculinity, ageing and rurality, and older LGBT citizens. His ground-breaking use of qualitative methods, including biography and auto-ethnography, and the use of tools from the arts in social science research and dissemination are well-known.

Jones acted as Author and Executive Producer of the award-winning short film, RUFUS STONE, funded by Research Councils UK. The film is now available for free viewing on the Internet and has been viewed by more than 13,000 people in 150 countries.

Areas of expertise• Close relationships, culture and ethnicity• Social psychology, sociology• Ageing, self and identity• Interpersonal processes, personality, individual differences, social networks, prejudice and stereotyping• Sexuality and sexual orientation• Creativity and the use of the arts in Social Science

Media experienceHis work has been reported widely in the media, including:BBC Radio 4,BBC TV news,Times Higher Education, Sunday New York Times, International Herald-Tribune and The Independent.

PERFORM, INVOLVE, PARTICIPATE

Saturday, 12 December 2009

Jeffrey is using his blog and autoethnography to navigate his PhD at Lancaster. He often asks me short, concise 'just the facts, ma'm' kinds of questions on the blog or in response to my postings.

I feel like Susan Boyle. She is answering questions such as 'What's your favorite meal? What's your favorite show tune?" in videos on her website. Yoko Ono answers 10-15 questions from 'readers' a week on Twitter. The era of the fast and furious, no-nonsense reply is upon us.

Jeffrey asks (Do you like that use of the newspaper-style breezy present tense?):

Kip, I think you hit on the reason why autoethnography may be so contentious a method! From this vantage, how would you define this (especially for those who find it easy to confuse the two)?

'My personal story is simply one of the raw materials used to produce my product. What I construct stands alone for what it is (a story, a painting, an A/V production), but comes to life when it engages with the response that it instils in the reader/viewer/audience, “… those wonderful people out there in the dark!”' Rough talk and chocolate brownies

In the best autoethnography, I am always a minor character and/or a conduit to a time, place and other people. I become fictional through writing. I am the sorcerer who reminds the audience of themselves.

Reflexive writing is more like a diary; private thoughts that perhaps I share, perhaps I do not. They remind me of myself. I get to be Proust in private.

To do good research, it is myself that often that I need to get out of the way, so writing about my self may help me accomplish this.

A 'personal journey' PhD is often boring and usually takes about twice as much time anyway. If you already know the subject of your research, what is the point of investigating it?

Thursday, 26 November 2009

'... the exposition of an idea through fragments, through a roving and disconnected type of writing, can sometimes better circumscribe its object than can a more linear approach'.--Nicolas Bourriaud (2009) The Radicant

Tuesday, 24 November 2009

‘We locate in a specifically relational humanism a new and significant means of realizing traditional visions of human well-being’ (Gergen 1997). Social science often has sought new ways of attaining greater "sensibility" to humanistic concerns; nonetheless, the status of new forms of production and dissemination as academic knowledge remains contested and ambiguous, and further development is required (Jones 2006).

Any large and diverse research project benefits from the documentation of its very development. Relational humanism in documentation and dissemination means that personal autonomy, dignity, liberty and responsibility are considered positive values for consideration throughout the on-going dialogue created by the research itself and its dissemination. It is through having a record of this very process that knowledge can be shared with others, creating a continuum on which the outcomes of a project's efforts can begin to flourish. The concern is with ambiguity, process, meaning, totality and history (Plummer 1983) through the continuity and “aliveness” of ideas. Humanising the process of documentation can be achieved by historically accurate ways: by listening to the stories of process and change within the research development itself. In turn, humanising the method of dissemination means consideration of any audience's part in the overall progression and building audience participation into the overall plan. A relational humanism urges us as theorists, human scientists and practitioners to seek ways – multiple ways - of generating integrative conversation.

Relational humanism thus appears not as ‘top-down’ concept but as a practical process of give-and-take by all of the players. Humanism also prompts us to imagine our potential audiences in ways which challenge us to re-imagine the commonweal, common good, or imagined community across disciplines and the intellectual freedom (Wakelin 2007) of our audiences themselves—a relational aesthetic (Bourriaud 2002; Jones 2006).Our considerations, through embodied perception, encourage us to walk around the edges of processes, to see beyond factuality to the humanism hidden on the other side. By extending our gaze beyond the usual, to new technologies and modes of presentation, we open doors to new understandings and resources (Jones 2006).

‘The precise meaning of relatedness, then, remains indeterminate and dependent upon further co-ordinations within relationship’(Gergen 1997).

Friday, 30 October 2009

Elana wrote and asked me what thoughts I had on social science and artistic vision (in her case, photography) and the merging of the two fields. Are there specific criteria that I hope to see reflected in the creation of ‘scientifically supportive imagery’?

I responded that I still find writing about the visual to be ironic, at best. I strongly believe that we can learn more by looking, reveal more by showing than through simple justification in text. Art and Science are both about discovery and creating a record of that discovery. Both are infused with the time and place in which they are practiced. The 'audience' for any work of art, any scientific discovery makes the ultimate interpretation. This is as it should be.

The visual image needs to be interrogated. Just like a criminal in a police station. We should never accept what we first see as the final truth, but realise that we are peeling an onion of multiple truths (and lies). Sociology, when done well, is a good detective story.

Some of the best 'social photography' today is done on cell/mobile phones and appears on flickr and Facebook. Photography does not always have to have a 'cause' or social issue in order to be about social life. There is much fodder for investigation in the ordinary.

Elana cited Howard Becker a lot.It reminded me of his piano playing.I want both Beckers/I want to be both.I suggested that Elana read this blog. I proposed that it is a non-course in performative social science, an educational process by subterfuge (see preceding blog item).

Next, an anthropological journal sent me a friend’s paper on the use of poetry in social science to review.I highly recommended publication of the paper; then I added:

When any breakthrough occurs in art (or social science or anthropology?), it is necessary in order for it to find its place on a continuum of time that other attempts are made to refine answers to a set of questions that change only slowly (Kubler, The Shape of Time, 1962).This effort in the refinement of the use of poetics in social science contributes to the development of the use of the arts in this arena by astutely placing the case in a solid social science framework.Not the artistic endeavor that will punctuate the historical continuum as a great work of art, rather, this contribution is the quieter and deeper foundation-building labour that is necessary for other great strides forward to make their mark and prosper in the first place.

The author only hints at the audience (or community) so necessary for the dialogic to exist within our relationships with works of art.Further attention to relational aesthetics (Bourriaud 2001) may very well help inform further development of the theoretical base for poetics in social science research.The intuitive aspects of a shared culture, coupled with a more universal response to injustices (and, therefore, an artistic expression of these emotive components), compete for resolution within more rigid ethical frameworks and well-tested methodologies in the discussion.My take is that by developing a trust in personal instinct and intuition and the naturally expressive and moral potential of these resources, social science research will become more comfortable within these new paradigms and more willing to jettison some of the baggage ofits old ‘academic rigor’ and procedural ethics.

Alan Turing, mathematician who helped crack German codes during the second world war. Photograph: Public Domain

Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay.

Describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better," Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

Turing is most famous for his work in helping create the "bombe" that cracked messages enciphered with the German Enigma machines. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after admitting a sexual relationship with a man.

He was given experimental chemical castration as a "treatment". His criminal record meant he was unable to continue his work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) because his security privileges were withdrawn. Two years later he killed himself, aged 41.

Thousands have signed a Downing Street petition calling for an official apology, among them the novelist Ian McEwan, scientist Richard Dawkins, and gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.

Paying tribute to Turing's contribution to "Britain's fight against the darkness of dictatorship", Brown described him as "a quite brilliant mathematician".

"Without his outstanding contribution, the history of world war two could well have been very different," he writes.

"The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of gross indecency – in effect, tried for being gay.

"His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones."

The petition, which yesterday had 30,805 signatures, was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming, who has also written to the Queen to request Turing be awarded a posthumous knighthood. Although an official apology is unusual, the act is seen as symbolic. Alan Turing is survived by three neices – Inagh, Shuna and Janet, from his brother's first marriage – and a nephew, John Dermot Turing, from his brother's second marriage, along with their associated family members.

Acknowledging the strength of feeling, Brown wrote: "Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

"Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

"This recognition of Alan's status as one of Britain's most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue."

"But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind … It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present.

"So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work I am very proud to say: we're sorry, you deserved so much better."

Though most famous for his codebreaking, Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science, having made highly significant contributions to the emerging field of artificial intelligence and computing. After the war he worked at many institutions, including the University of Manchester, where he worked on the Manchester mark 1, one of the first recognisable modern computers.

In 1999 Time Magazine named him as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

• This article was amended on Sunday 13 September 2009. We said that Alan Turing, the man often considered the father of modern computer science had no surviving family. In fact, his family includes three nieces, a nephew and his mother, and several children and spouses of this group. This has been corrected.

We are looking for a small group of people with some background in film, theatre or improvisation work or at least an interest in performance who are not shy about experimenting in front of each other!You don’t necessarily need to be a researcher or a performer; rather, we are more interested in a gathering of creative people with an interest in performance as a way of raising awareness.If you are fascinated by learning about improvisation and its potential as an interpretive tool for research, then this is a great opportunity to try something cutting edge in the research process.This is definitely a new way of thinking about the interpretation of research data through improvisation.

Monday, 7 September 2009

'This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to arts-based research (ABR) practices, which scholars in multiple disciplines are fruitfully using to reveal information and represent experiences that traditional methods cannot capture. Each of the six major ABR genres—narrative inquiry, poetry, music, performance, dance, and visual art—is covered in chapters that introduce key concepts and tools and present an exemplary research article by a leading ABR practitioner. Patricia Leavy discusses the kinds of research questions these innovative approaches can address and offers practical guidance for applying them in all phases of a research project, from design and data collection to analysis, interpretation, representation, and evaluation'.

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

'As I recall from my own college days, the “genius” professors weren’t always as predictable or pleasant as those who seemed more devoted to the teaching profession than to their own ideas. But I remember them better. The feet of an impassioned, bizarre, and brilliant professor were worth sitting at. They (the professors, not the feet) challenged my perception of what reasoning was, what it meant to have an independent mind'. --The New Yorker

Saturday, 1 August 2009

This photo montage, 'Blackbirds/Sally (Venice)' (and above), was not used in a recent web post that we submitted about our 'Grey and Pleasant Land' projects at Bournemouth University.

I have often commented on the insensitivity of the photographs used to illustrate stories about ageing. These are generally of two types: ones that infantalise older people or others that portray them as 'poor old dears'. Neither are acceptable or represent the wide diversity of older people or the range of possibilities to be found in later life, in my estimation.

This photo represents ageing as a reflective time of lifeand the opportunities that growing older provides through the latent potential of memories. This has resonance with Lars Tornstam's theory of gerotranscendence or 'a shift in meta perspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction'. (See Tornstam) I have written about gerotranscendence in The Spiritual Dimension: a gerotranscendental take on Akira Kurosawa´s film "Ran", linked on Tornstam's website.

ISSA has graciously gifted us with the publishing rights to the song to use in our project. We hope to use the song in a short film that will be the outcome of three years of intensive research on old gay and lesbian citizens who frequently live isolated lives in rural settings in the south west of England and Wales.

The Valley (lyrics)I live in the hillsYou live in the valleysAnd all that you know are those blackbirdsYou rise every morning Wondering what in the world will the world bring today Will it bring you joy or will it take it away And every step you take is guided by The love of the light on the land and the blackbird's cry You will walk in good company The valley is dark The burgeoning holding The stillness obscured by their judging You walk through the shadows Uncertain and surely hurting Deserted by the blackbirds and the staccato of the staff And though you trust the light towards which you wend your way Sometimes you feel all that you wanted has been taken away You will walk in good company I love the best of you You love the best of me Though it is not always easy Lovely? lovely? We will walk in good company The shepherd upright and flowing You see...--Jane Siberry (I S S A)Performance of 'The Valley' in Sydney by kd lang"I'd have to say that Jane Siberry's 'The Valley' is probably my ultimate, all-time favorite song. I really love the sentiment of it," lang says. "I haven't talked to Jane directly about it, but what I've heard is that she wrote it when she lived across from a special needs facility. She used to see one of the residents walking...and she was trying to understand the world they were existing in. To me, that's a really beautiful way to basically approach everyone, because in essence we're all in the hills and all in the valleys, as the song says. It just depends on where your perspective is. But I just love the sentiment of [the verse] 'you will walk in good company' because we're all here."--Boston Globe - July 9, 2004.

Friday, 17 July 2009

One of the most talked-about sessions at the Personal Democracy Forum conference we attended a few weeks back in New York was Professor Michael Wesch's speech, "The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity." Michael teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and has most recently focused on the impact of social media and digital culture on society.

Working alongside his students as digital explorers, Michael set out to learn about the YouTube phenomenon through experimentation. Just like a team of anthropologists living with tribes in the rain forest to learn about their culture, Michael and his students went "native" into the YouTube ecosystem, uploading videos, sharing them, talking with other YouTubers, and recording their thoughts along the way.

In essence, Michael and his students are exploring how our media shapes us. If the revolution of TV created a society where mindless suburbanites fixated on one-way conversations being blasted at them through their television sets, then the Internet has brought new opportunities for 2-way communication and community building through our computer screens. Yet the web also creates infinite opportunities to amplify the inane, and allows a new kind of anonymity that can lead to malaise and lack of responsibility. YouTube - which allows for both personalization and anonymity - represents this phenomenon in unique ways, and what Michael and his students discover in their research is thought-provoking. So much so that National Geographic recently named Michael an "Emerging Explorer." Not bad for a guy whose research involves watching a lot of YouTube videos.

This 30-minute speech he gave at the Personal Democracy Forum is well worth watching for anyone who's interested in YouTube and modern culture.

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Nationalist counterdemonstrators shout homophobic slogans at gay protesters in Moscow'Many professionals in health, education, and community service roles are caught in a particular identity bind—living in a complex social borderland of credibility and professional authority while experiencing or having experienced the same discrimination,violence and/or trauma they’ve committed their working lives to helping others overcome. For some, the disclosure of their own stories of marginalization has become a tool for advocacy, for telling a larger truth; for others,self-disclosure is a more personal action, intended to assist those isolated in their suffering in developing trust and connection'.--‘Speaking Out’ by Linde Zingaro

When we uncover injustice,prejudice and (quite frankly) illegal hatred and bigotry in the process of carrying out our work, we are ethically bound to out it. Expediency, by keeping such outrage quiet, hidden and out of view, is the greatest unethical practice of all. There are times when academia needs to stop being just a 'talking shop' and take a stand on principle.

The bigot may cry: "Oh! You've have misrepresented and vilified me!" I respond: "Then why did you engage in such verbal abuse in the first place? Your insults are perceived as encouraging hatred amongst your peers towards me and others like me." I have protected your anonymity in order that you might think about your actions and the damage that they may cause to others. I expose your actions as an example from which others may learn. I 'speak out' so that such behaviour and abuse will not continue unchecked.

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

“You show me anything that depicts institutional progress … anything that somebody can get a promotion on, and as soon as you invent that statistical category 50 people in that institution will be at work trying to figure out a way to make it look as if progress is actually occurring when actually no progress is... The same game is played everywhere – nobody’s actually in the business of doing what the institution is supposed to do... If there’s an institution that is supposed to serve you or that you are supposed to serve, and it’s supposed to care for you and be a societal positive, it will betray you.”David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Friday, 19 June 2009

An auto-ethnography/auto-biography/auto-ephemera audio/visual production that describes its creator as a member of a culture at a specific time and place: being queer in 1965 on one night in New York City at a famous (straight) mod nightclub, “Arthur”.

Themes include being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out” within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world. These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture.

As auto-ephemera, it documents minor transient personal moments of everyday life: something transitory, lasting a day. Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity.

Thursday, 18 June 2009

Alistair. There’s a book in my Alistair stories to be told someday. He wasn’t famous, but yes, we admired the same famous people. Laurie Anderson was one of them.

I met Alistair in a Philadelphia gay disco standing next to a popcorn machine at a Sunday afternoon ‘tea dance’ sometime back in the early 80s. He was from New Zealand, travelling around the US on one of those one-price open tickets, had just been in NYC staying at the Chelsea Hotel (to soak up the atmosphere) and had come to my hometown of Philadelphia to visit its wonderful Museum of Art.

I didn’t know where NZ was exactly, but I thought it was near Japan. I gave him my Japan(David Sylvian) badge (a band I loved at the time).

After a lot of push/pull, a lot of doubt and angst and, only on his second night in Philadelphia, we slept together. I say angst, because he was the kind of “with it”, young beauty with just enough NZ exoticism to make him totally out of my league. So of course, I was immediately smitten and fell in love and went into my sick puppy act. He was leaving on the morning of the third day. How could he? I had just found him. My club friends were jealous so I knew that he must be a catch.

I wanted him back and had no money to follow him to Washington DC. Walking through a square in Philadelphia, tears streaming down my face, I reached into my pocket and found about $15. A florist's shop was just ahead of me and I walked in. I asked the person at the counter, "can you send flowers to DC?" "Yes. Of course. What would you like?" "Flowers like the one's in the film, 'Diva'." "What?" "Just call DC, they will know what I want." The person on the other end did know the film and even squealed, I think, when it was mentioned. The gay mafia. So the flowers were ordered and I was broke.

That Parisian bouquet did finally convince him to return a few days later. We spent almost a week together. A lot of art talk, a lot of fucking.

Then he left for the west coast, never to return.

I was devastated. I couldn’t think of anything else but getting him back to the east coast (and he had that open ticket too). I called him several times a day on the west coast until he stopped answering the phone.

I thought about the famous people he had mentioned to me. I got Divine’s autograph for him. I found some of the hair from disco diva Sylvester’s weave on the floor of my friend’s club and saved it for him.

Then I met Laurie Anderson. She had a one woman show at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and so I took my broken heart along to see if viewing someone's work admired by Alistair would remind me of him. ( I told you that I was in bad shape) It was the opening night, so Laurie Anderson was there. The only art I remember was a little muslin doll in a rocking chair on the floor of a gallery with her image projected on it talking to gallery visitors. I thought it was quite funny. (Was I going off the deep end?)

I found Laurie. She was very friendly and we began to chat. Of course, all of my conversations at the time were about Alistair and how in love I was and how I would never see him again and how he was going to leave LA and fly to New Zealand (wherever that was) and how I would never see him again!

I guess I was quite convincing. Laurie responded (I did let her get a word or two into the conversation), “Get a poster or something and I will write him a message”. I grabbed one of her exhibition posters and a marker. She wrote in grand lettering: "Alistair, Come back! He loves you. Laurie Anderson”.

A day or two later I was phone-stalking Alistair in California again. Finally, he picked up.

“I think that you want me to come there, don’t you?"I asked.

“I thought you’d figure it out eventually” he chided. "Meet me in Los Angeles next Monday. I will be at LAX around noon waiting for you with a gelato. Don’t call again.”

I hung up the phone excited beyond belief. I had never even been on a plane before. I had no money. Fortunately, my brother, convinced by my sob story, bought the ticket. I was going to LA to be with Alistair for two weeks!

I took Laurie’s message with me and handed it to him shortly after I arrived. He acted quite laid-back (it was California after all and he had had a bit part in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence).

Underneath his slight smile or smirk, I guessed that Laurie had pleased him, even I had pleased him somewhat by coming to California.

The airport departure two weeks later is a story for another time. Suffice it to say that we believed that we would never see each other again.

A few years later, I went to Paris for the first time only because it was a place that Alistair had said that he wanted to visit (although I never admitted to this at the time). I sent him a sarcastic postcard soon after arrival. This postcard journey opened a whole phase in my life (again, a story for another time).

We did meet up again, years later in Philadelphia, when he was on a shoot for the BBC and then several more times when we were both living in London. I was involved with someone else at the time. He seemed more serious and not so light and carefree then. I missed that. We tried to be friends, tried to rekindle something, but it never was quite the same.

Laurie was right. He should have come back when she told him to.

[You can read a short piece of mine in the Journal of Nursing Research on emotion and art. The painting that I talk about in the article is of the beach where Alistair and I spent many days whilst in California. This was my second venture into autobiography 'by stealth' in academic journals. Now you have the back story to that paper too.]

A work package in the New Dynamics of Ageing Project, "Grey and Pleasant Land?: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society"

The project is rooted in and continues upon in-depth findings and networks established by a three-year action research project, Gay and Grey in Dorset. The Gay and Grey project investigated the needs, wants, fears and aspirations of older lesbians and gay men. This study's conclusions were that older gays and lesbians feel at risk of isolation in rural areas and that this phenomenon needed further study. Further, the study's participants coming out stories seemed to be a device employed in negotiating social inclusion over the life course.

Learning more about how this is accomplished, and over time, seemed important for further investigation. Gathered narrated biographies will eventually form the basis for the composite characters for a short film, produced by a professional filmmaker in collaboration with the research projects investigators. In addition to the collected biographies, visual ethnographic data will be collected which enriches the location, age range and activities of the research population. This primary data will then be interpreted by citizen panels and developed by them, in collaboration with the filmmaker, into the film's script. The professional level, broadcast quality film itself will be totally grounded in the data—both in the life story interviews and the visual anthropological data gleaned from observation in the study's rural communities.

Sunday, 3 May 2009

Ray didn't talk about it, he just did it.That's why you don't find art magazines lying around quoting the art philosophy of Ray Johnson.

28 February – 10 May 2009

Raven Row’s inaugural exhibition is the first large UK show of the collages and mailings of New York artist Ray Johnson (1927–1995). Johnson used radical means to construct and distribute images, inadvertently inventing the ‘mail art movement’. He made art out of social life – both real and imagined – gathering celebrities, the art world, and friends into his work. His influence on twentieth century art far exceeds the recognition he receives.

‘Ray Johnson. Please Add to & Return’ is significant in representing Johnson’s mailings, objects he regarded as gifts and thus contrary to the market, equally with the collage works he made for gallery exhibition in the sixties and seventies. Also included are the collages he subjected to a seemingly endless process of reworking and overlaying, which were found signed with multiple dates and neatly arranged in his house at the time of his death.

Saturday, 2 May 2009

In Comcast Center's lobby is the Comcast Experience which is a 2,000 square feet (190 m2) high-definition LED screen that has become a tourist attraction. Designed to be environmentally friendly, the skyscraper is the tallest Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building in the United States.

Monday, 27 April 2009

Most people who stumble across the YouTube video of the self-proclaimed rock star Gory Bateson singing to a scantily clad prostitute in Amsterdam's red-light district probably have no idea that the work is part of a research project — or that the man holding the guitar is a tenured professor. The video has attracted more than 12,000 views and won a few online fans. But it has upset some of the professor's colleagues, who say that whatever this two-minute clip is, it is definitely not academic work.

Your message certainly calls attention to the diversity and depth of qualitative research. In doing so, however, you have missed or excluded the work being done in Europe (for example, FQS, the trilingual, international, open access journal for qualitative research) and tend to conceive of 'international' events and resources in a North American-centric way. The only exception seems to be a mention of a journal out of Cardiff (perhaps because they have been loudest in their criticism of some 'American' qualitative work?).

You have not mentioned our work here at Bournemouth and the Centre for Qualitative Research, our pioneering efforts in novel and innovative research methods, humanising health and social care, and Performative Social Science (Performative Social Science moves well beyond the 'performance ethnography' that you do mention, by the way). Your message also leaves out the biennial qualitative research conference that we organise, attracting participants from dozens of countries every two years (and organised with quality, rather than simply quantity, in mind). In addition, we are well known for the four to six masterclasses held annually at Bournemouth with internationally recognised qualitative experts in a diverse range of qualitative methods (you were one of them a while back!) .

There are many other universities, centres and qualitative groups throughout Europe making important contributions to qualitative research and methodological innovation. (International resources) I will not rehearse that list here, except to say that it is often to Europe that many American qualitative researchers look when seeking a philosophical foundation to their qualitative efforts. In addition, qualitative work from Australia, South America, the sub-continent and other global locations cannot be ignored. By doing so, American scholars run the risk of creating an 'intellectual Las Vegas', --inward-looking and micro centric.

As an American, I can understand how easily we can fall into the trap that what is American is global and that we do not have to look beyond our shores for answers (examples from sociology of the immigrant to America turning her/his back on Europe abound). I would hope that recent movements, however, are beginning to change that pervasive cultural flaw. The current economic crisis (and any potential solutions to it) seems to point to the fact that we need to think globally if we are to dig our way out of it.

Please remember your 'cousins' over here; we may actually be able to contribute to the battle raging there!

From:Norman Denzin, Distinguished Professor of Communications, College of Communications Scholar, and Research Professor of Communications, Sociology, and Humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

We write to respond to NSF's 2009 report entitled "Workshop on Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research." We welcome the recent attention given by NSF to interdisciplinary standards for systematic qualitative research in the social sciences (Lamont and White, 2009; Becker 2009). NSF's statement recognizes the central place of qualitative research in the academy today, while noting considerable variability in the emphasis on constructivist versus positivist epistemologies.

Missing from the lengthy report, however, is acknowledgement of the critical and interpretive qualitative work being done in and supported by the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (qi2009. org), the number of journals now publishing this work (Atkinson and Delamont, 2006), the number of disciplines involved (St. Pierre and Roulston, 2006; American Education Research Association, 2006, 2008), and the many different paradigms, methods, and approaches being widely applied within the broader field of qualitative inquiry.

In seeking interdisciplinary (cultural anthropology, law and social science, political science, sociology) standards for qualitative research, the NSF workshop: (1) narrowly and traditionally defines qualitative research (QR)/methods as a set of data gathering tools, to be used alone or in tandem with quantitative data techniques; (2) narrowly frames QR to only include interviews, archival research, and ethnography; (3) seeks common themes and standards between QR and quantitative methods, such as: (a) an emphasis on rigor, (b) operationalizing key constructs, (c) testing hypotheses, (d) thorough data analysis, (e) sampling techniques, (f) small samples can yield big results, still be scientific, even if not random, and offer generalization.

This discourse contests and debates terms like operationalize, test, sample, generalize, and data analysis. Regrettably, in confining the document to these four disciplines, the report failed to consider the efforts by committees within the American Education Research Association to formalize evaluative criteria for qualitative research, including arts-based methodologies (AERA 2006, 2008). This discourse is situated within the global conversation regarding evidence-based research, and the challenges it raises for qualitative researchers. Indeed the report seems to stand outside time, ignoring the demands the global audit culture places on social science inquiry.

The report calls for: (1) partnerships with professional associations, (2) summer institutes focused on qualitative methodology (i.e. IQRM--Institute for Qualitative Methods--the qualitative equivalent of ICPSR--Interuniversity for Political and Social Research), (3) workshops for teachers of qualitative methods. Thankfully, two such institutes now exist: the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology at the University of Calgary (twelve years old), and The Center for Qualitative Inquiry and the International Institute for Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which is the independent non-profit that oversees the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (six years old). In addition, a global network of interconnected Qualitative Inquiry Collaborating Sites connects programs and scholars in 65 nations. In May 2009, the Fifth International Congress will be held. As has been typical each year, the 2009 program has attracted 225 panel and 1500 paper submissions from 40 disciplines and 70 nations. Additionally, there were 70 submissions for the Illinois Distinguished Dissertation Competition, which features critical and interpretive ethnographic work

We urge NSF to take into account the work being done by interpretive and critical ethnographers in all disciplines, including Communication Studies and Education among others, and to include on their review panels and in their workshops distinguished scholars working within these approaches who can effectively represent this body of qualitative researchers in further deliberations about qualitative research.

St. Pierre, Elizabeth A. and Kathryn Roulston. 2006. "The State of Qualitative Inquiry: A Contested Science." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19, 6 (November-December): 673-684.--

Sunday, 19 April 2009

[In March, 2009, the National Science Foundation issued a report on a conference about qualitative methods (Lamont and White, 2009). This report followed an earlier report on an earlier conference (Ragin, Nagel, and White, 2004). The two reports differed in important ways and, since documents bearing the imprimatur of the Foundation may seem to have some kind of official status, and might be passed around as presenting an authoritative statement on the matter, I thought it worthwhile to prepare a sort of counter-document, indicating what I think are the shortcomings of the 2009 report, and questioning its implicit claim to authoritative status.]

“Quit whining and learn to do real science by stating theoretically derived, testable hypotheses, with methods of data gathering and analysis specified before entering the field. Then you’ll get NSF grants like the real scientists do.” Howard Becker's summation of the NSF foundation report on qualitative research.

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Aesthetics as much as economics guides the interpretation of social life’ (Smith 1997: 502)

It is a historical fact that the major upheavals and transformations in Western art and science occurred during periods of cross-pollination from discipline to discipline (The Enlightenment of science and reason, truth and beauty, for example, or the Paris of the beginning of the 20th Century in art, music, literature, dance and design). Forward-looking arts and humanities academics are currently directly involved in such cross-disciplinary communication with contemporary practitioners from other disciplines. Some have, however, reached an impasse when re-exploring historical concepts such as the death of the author (Barthes, 1967) in literary criticism and the utility of silence (Sontag, 1967) in fiction. These conundrums, when complicated by contemporary questions in art criticism such as the direct involvement of audience in producing relationships with the world through signs, forms, actions and objects (Bourriaud, 2002) contribute to this contemporary unease. All of these questions challenge the traditional means of production and diffusion in both the arts and humanities and their scholarship.

From a different viewpoint, questions of ethics and questions of evaluation have begun to convince social scientists to look beyond their own philosophical groundings to aesthetics for solutions (Jones, 2006). They have found that text is often only linear and, therefore, temporal; in text the meaning must be precise or risk disbelief. Narrated stories turned into written text (the vast majority of the outputs of the academic interview culture) now require a fresh approach. The constructed memories that are the building blocks of narrated lives, like dreams, are simultaneous layers of past and present—the visual and the spatial—and these added dimensions, beyond the purely temporal, now demand attention.

At the same time, practitioners in the arts and humanities are looking for a framework within which to base their more scholarly pursuits and are turning to the social scientist for possible solutions or methods and philosophies. There is a pervasive longing amongst arts and humanities practitioners (photographers and filmmakers, choreographers, poets, composers, creators of new media, etc.) to connect somehow in a relational way to a science of social beings who inhabit space, place and time, and to establish scholarly grounding for these explorations. A recent seminar at The Sixth Annual Conference of the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, University of Glasgow (Oct 2007), for example, asked the following questions:

Can art change the world? Can the Arts and Humanities produce radical new knowledge? How can the effects of material and ideological change be traced? How do traditional research fields or areas approach changes in research theory and methodology? Can interdisciplinary methods in research better record innovation and change?

What is learned when art talks to social science, social science responds to art? A not so quiet revolution is currently taking place in the application of research in the social sciences. The use of tools from the arts and humanities, in both investigation of concerns and dissemination of data, is gaining critical mass (Jones, 2006; Gergen & Jones 2008). Photography, music, dance, poetry, video installations, dramatic monologues and theatrical performances have recently been added to the researcher's investigative toolbox, calling itself, “Performative Social Science” (PSS). For example, a series of five workshops, “Social Science in Search of its Muse: Exploratory Workshops in Arts-related Production and Dissemination of Social Science Data”, took place at Bournemouth University (BU) from November, 2006 through June, 2007, supported by the, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and funded under its Nature of Creativity Scheme. These efforts were put forward in order to indicate means with which social scientists could benefit by identifying areas of possible collaboration with each other as well as with practitioners from the arts. Participants were able to return from these encounters across disciplines to more traditional outlets of dissemination with renewed possibilities for creative and innovative exploration of knowledge production and diffusion.

At the end of the initial four workshops, a short film was proposed which would act as a record of the events as well as an audio/visual evaluation tool. The film (“Social Science finding its muse”) was premiered at Qualitative research and arts practice: The potential for research capacity building, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, University of Wales—Cardiff, September, 2007. It has been shown to colleagues at BU many times, a visiting group of scholars from Sweden and elsewhere, and was invited for presentation at Bristol University’s Postgraduate School of Education as an exemplar of ‘Facilitated Learning’. It was also entered into the Learning on Screen Awards 2008 competition. The film has been available on the Internet since September, 2007 and has had more than 2000 viewings at this writing.

In addition, a recent Special Issue on Performative Social Science in the online, qualitative journal, Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Jones et al May, 2008) provides a wide range of examples and manifestations of PSS, with contributions from various disciplines/subject areas, and realized through a wide variety of approaches to qualitative research practice. It contains over 100 photographs and almost 50 illustrations, as well as 36 videos and two audio-recordings. Forty-two articles were produced by contributors from 13 countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America) and written in three languages.

What "performative" refers and relates to in these contributions and elsewhere is the communicative powers of research and the natural involvement of an "audience", whether that be a group of peers or a group of students, a physical audience or a cyber audience, even a solitary reader of a journal or a book. This is good news, not only for participants in research studies, who can often be involved in producing subsequent performative outputs, but also for the larger community to whom these findings should be directed.

Relational Aesthetics offers a theoretical grounding to the complexities of collaboration across seemingly disparate disciplines such as the arts and social sciences and further exploration of the synergies between them. Nicolas Bourriaud’s (2002) Relational Aesthetics is suggested as a starting point because he offers a post-modern, contemporary framework that allows academics to think about aesthetics and the use of platforms from the arts across disciplines in refreshing ways. Relational Art is located in human interactions and their social contexts. Central to it are inter-subjectivity, being-together, the encounter and the collective elaboration of meaning, based in models of sociability, meetings, events, collaborations, games, festivals and places of conviviality. By using the word ‘conviviality’, the emphasis is placed on commonality, equal status and relationship (Hewitt & Jordon 2004: 1). Relational Aesthetics or ‘socializing art’ often comprises elements of interactivity, but its most noticeable characteristic is its socializing effect. Through such efforts, it aims to bring people together and to increase understanding (Johannson 2000: 2). In fact, Bourriaud believes that art is made of the same material as social exchanges. If social exchanges are the same as art, how can we portray them?

Performative Social Science challenges the traditional binary between research and (re)presentation, that is, between acts of observing or ‘gathering data’ and subsequent reports on this process (Gergen & Gergen 2003: 4). Text is often only linear and, therefore, temporal; in text the meaning must be precise or risk disbelief. Conversely, ‘working visually involves a significant shift away from the often oddly lifeless and mechanical accounts of everyday life in textual representation, towards … engagements that are contextual, kinaesthetic and sensual: that live’ (Halford & Knowles 2005: 1), reflecting, perhaps, what Denzin forecasts as ‘the cinematic-interview society’ (Denzin 2001: 23).

Asking a person to tell us about her/his life through photographs (as one example) might be just a beginning. By doing this, in a less than perfect way, we are at least starting by participating in the storytelling of the person in her/his world, her/his expectations, successes, failures and dreams. In the end, the final product of any compilation of interactive visual images (and, as importantly, the process of creating it), certainly reflects Bourriaud’s call for relational art (and, therefore, “performative” diffusion of biographic production) that is about inter-subjectivity, the encounter and the collective elaboration of meaning, reflecting the material of social exchanges within a spirit of conviviality and play.

What does such an effort contribute to traditional academic values? ‘This will be uncomfortable. Novelty is always uncomfortable. We shall need to alter academic habits and develop sensibilities appropriate to a methodological dencentring’ (Law & Urry 2004: 404). What needs to be recognized and acknowledged, then, is that, beyond the text of traditional research material and its promise of personal revelation, the territory of a physical intimacy that is shared by the researcher and the researched remains situated. Recoiling from this shared intimacy negates the potential for the cathartic, audience-like experience and the possibilities of a truly reflective knowing of other human beings. Embracing—a good word for it, too—the physicality of these potential relationships unlocks possibilities for deeper understanding and further opening up of relationships.

'Kip Jones brings the genre of what he calls performative social sciences forward with wide-ranging theoretical, academic, and artistic products in a various media that takes up how social scientists can use art for investigation and dissemination.'

About Me

I am an expert in biographic narrative intperpretive method and performative social science.

My greatest strength is my ability to get people involved—even excited—about the possibilities of creative human interactions, knowledge-sharing and the potential of qualitative social science endeavours.

An American by birth, I have been studying and working in the UK for the past 15 years and travelling throughout Europe to learn and engage. Part of my work has involved developing tools from the arts and humanities for use by social scientists in dissemination of qualitative data.

Recognition

What they say at JISC:Kip’s blog, ‘KIPWORLD’, covers a wide range of topics from advice on writing a PhD thesis to insight into his creative process. He regularly uses his blog, Facebook and Twitter to share his research (with) others. Kip also contributes to the LSE Impact blog, LSE Review of Books, Discover Society, Sociological Imagination, Creative Quarter, The Creativity Post and the Bournemouth University Research Blog.

Creative Commons

Watch RUFUS STONE now!

Watch award-winning, research-based short biopic, RUFUS STONE live on the Internet.
“This film is as good as most Oscar-nominated shorts, and vastly superior to many. In my opinion, it is just about as good as a short film gets.” –Patricia Leavy, The Qualitative Report
Nominated for the AHRC Anniversary Prize for Research in Film, the Jury remarked:'Beautifully made, lyrical and moving and packs a complete narrative arc into its short span.'

5 Minutes with Kip Jones

Kip Jones at LSE Literary Fest

Kip Jones was a member of the panel at the LSE Review of Books hosted event as part of the 5th LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival, entitled, "Beyond the Book: new forms of academic communication". Kip spoke on “Performative Social Science: What it is and how it started” then joined the panel for a lively Q&A session. A podcast of the event is now available.